One story in Philadelphia recently captured a lot of attention. Just before midnight on a Friday two weeks ago, a SEPTA police officer found 2-year-old Jeremiyah wandering in LOVE Park, alone. He had no shoes and no coat, despite the fact it was one of the coldest nights of the fall season thus far. The officer contacted the city Department of Human Services; a worker took Jeremiyah to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for evaluation and subsequently placed him in foster care. A few hours later his parents, Michael Jones and Angelique Roland, who had been sleeping in a cardboard box with Jeremiyah and his 4-year-old sister, Malaysia, woke up. The parents panicked when they realized Jeremiyah was missing and contacted authorities. Within a few hours, Malaysia, too, was in the city’s care.Read more athttp://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/public_health/Is-poverty-a-crime.html#2KPUgYThqyKrTVRs.99

Americans prefer stories about our most vulnerable youngsters to have a happy ending, like the comic book character “Little Orphan Annie,” so popular that she returned as a musical and was recently remade into the move “Annie” It allows us to indulge in the fantasy that plucky orphans and foster children benefit less from governmental investment (one that might require increasing taxes and more infrastructure) and more from wealthy larger-than-life private citizen rescuers like “Daddy Warbucks” (the comic strip) or “Will Stacks” (the 2014 movie).